Fix Print Spooler Keeps Stopping on Windows 10/11 (Error 1067)

Windows print spooler crashes right after starting, killing all print jobs. Usually a corrupt driver, a stuck print job, or a third-party service hooking into the spooler.

Quick answer

Stop the spooler, delete everything inside C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS, restart the spooler, and remove any printer driver that was installed within the last week. That fixes 90% of cases.

What's actually happening here

The Print Spooler (spoolsv.exe) is the Windows service that buffers print jobs and hands them off to the actual printer hardware. When it "keeps stopping," it's crashing a second or two after you start it. The Windows Event Log will show Error 1067 ("The process terminated unexpectedly") or a Service-specific error 0x800706b9.

There are three common culprits, and they usually appear in this order:

A corrupt print job stuck in the queue. A partially written spool file can make the service crash on startup because it tries to read that garbage file and fails.
A bad printer driver. Third-party drivers — especially from Canon, HP, and Brother — sometimes register a port monitor or a language monitor that hooks deep into the spooler. One bad DLL and everything falls apart.
Third-party services that hijack the spooler. Some antivirus or cloud print apps (like Google Cloud Print's old client) inject DLLs into spoolsv.exe. If those DLLs are outdated, the spooler dies on load.

The reason clearing the spool folder is the first step is that it's the cheapest fix and requires no driver knowledge. You don't need to reinstall anything, just delete files. If that doesn't stop the crash, then you move to drivers.

Fix steps (in order)

Run these from an elevated command prompt (right-click Start, select Terminal (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin)).

Stop the spooler.
```
net stop spooler
```
If it's already stopped, you'll get a message saying so — that's fine.
Clear the spool queue folder.
```
del /Q /F /S "C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*"
```
That wipes all pending print jobs. If you have a job you actually need, save it to PDF first — but honestly, if the spooler is crashing, that job is already toast.
Restart the spooler.
```
net start spooler
```
Check if it stays running for 30 seconds. If yes, try printing a test page. If it crashes again, move to step 4.
Remove all printer drivers (the nuclear option).
```
printui /s /t2
```
That opens the Print Server Properties dialog. Go to the Drivers tab, select each driver, and click Remove. Choose Remove driver and driver package when asked.
Also delete the printer devices themselves via printui /s /t0 (the \"Printers\" tab) — remove everything, even the ones you think you need. You'll reinstall them later.
Restart the spooler again. If it stays up now, you know a driver was the culprit. Reinstall your printer using the manufacturer's latest driver from their website — not the one Windows Update offers, which is often stale.

If the spooler still crashes

Two more things to try, in order:

Check for third-party hooks

Run Autoruns from Sysinternals (free from Microsoft). Look under the Print Monitors tab. Anything that isn't a standard Windows component (like localspl.dll or tcpmon.dll) is a suspect. Disable them, then restart the spooler.

Also, temporarily disable your antivirus real-time protection. Some security suites hook into the spooler to scan print jobs, and a broken filter driver kills the service. If that fixes it, whitelist spoolsv.exe in your AV settings.

Re-register the spooler DLLs

Sometimes the spooler's own DLLs get unregistered after a Windows update. Re-register them manually:

regsvr32 /s localspl.dll
regsvr32 /s spoolss.dll
regsvr32 /s winspool.drv

This is rarely needed, but it's cheap and doesn't hurt.

Check for corrupted system files

Run sfc /scannow from an admin prompt. If it finds issues and can't repair them, follow up with DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. I've seen this fix spooler crashes that survived every other attempt, usually after a botched feature update.

Prevention

The spooler crashes most often after a Windows Update or a driver update. To avoid repeating this dance:

Don't let Windows Update install printer drivers automatically. Go to Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options and turn off Get me updates for other Microsoft products. Install printer drivers only from the manufacturer.
When you uninstall a printer, always remove the driver too, not just the device. Leaving orphaned drivers is how the spooler starts wearing out.
If you use a VPN or cloud print service, keep its client updated. Old versions are the classic cause of spooler hangs.

One last opinion: if you've done all this and the spooler still dies, consider whether that old printer is worth it. On Windows 11 22H2, I've seen perfectly good printers that simply have no working drivers anymore — and the fix is buying a newer model. Sometimes the honest answer is that the hardware doesn't belong on your network.